Nothingness is the state of nonexistence, a concept that has long troubled physicists and philosophers.
When I was in college many decades ago, I used to contemplate thoughts of infinity and the results of dividing by zero. My physics professor told me not to think about those things because it would drive me insane.
I didn't listen to him and spent the rest of my life studying scientific and philosophical essays by scholars on the subject.
You might think there's nothing to it, but "nothing" is quite enormous. It's the sum of everything that is nonexistent. Therefore, you might consider it to be a void or a vacuum.
We can also express it mathematically. The concept of "nothing" can be defined as "zero" mathematically. However, the ancient Romans felt there was no need for zero. As a result, Roman numerals have no representation for zero.1
Charles Seife, professor of journalism at New York University and author of "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea," explains nothingness as follows:
According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, nonexistence is the negation of being. Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, makes that clear by saying that for us to have nothing, it must consist of no space, no time, no particles, no fields, and no laws of nature.2
There are several ways to refer to that: Zero, nada, null, empty, vacant, vacuum, or void.
All of these relate to the idea of nonexistence. There is more of this "nothingness" than these simple terms. When we try to understand nothingness mathematically, we arrive at an entirely new philosophy that leaves us confused.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle never accepted the concept of division by zero. He found too many paradoxes with it.
Zero can go into anything an infinite number of times. So, we interpret division by zero as infinity.
The ancient Greeks were aware of the concept of zero. After all, they knew when they had no stones.
And the Egyptians eventually acquired the use of the number zero from the Babylonians, who used a symbol as a placeholder to represent the absence of a value.3
Quantum physics explains how a particle can go from existence to nonexistence and back again. That is a quantum fluctuation.
It may actually be moving through time, so once it is no longer in the present, we no longer see it. We might consider it to have become "nothing" or "void" of existence.
Even while nonexistent, the energy never dissipates. Einstein's formula E=mc2 applies very well. Energy and mass cannot be made or destroyed. It merely changes from one to another, as per Einstein's formula.
As shown by Einstein's formula above, energy and mass cannot be made or destroyed. That proves the universe did not come from nothing. But where was all that energy before the beginning? There are two theories.
All matter in our world contains a lot of nothing between its molecules and within its atoms. There is an enormous emptiness between the nucleus and electrons.
That means there is an entire factor of nonexistence within our physical world.
That explains how the entire universe could fit in a single black hole, possibly revealing how the whole universe emerged with the Big Bang.
I will show you how we can misinterpret the concept of "nothing" when something indeed does exist. We may not be aware of it for a particular reason.
To understand string theory, you need to understand that time is the fourth dimension in mathematical terms. Our three-dimensional world exists in the present but moves forward in time.
To understand this better, consider that one dimension is simply a line. You can only move back and forth along that line.
If you go 90 degrees perpendicular to that line, you create a plane (a flat surface) where you can move in two directions: length and width.
If you go 90 degrees perpendicular to that flat surface, you are moving in three dimensions: length, width, and height.
If you consider another 90-degree turn, the three-dimensional space we live in moves perpendicular in a 90-degree angle through the fourth dimension: Time.
Note, however, that we can't see into that fourth dimension. We can't observe the past or the future. We can only remember the past, and we can only anticipate the future.
String theory shows how we can observe an object wiggling around in a three-dimensional space. However, once that object wiggles within the fourth dimension, we are no longer aware of it.
It still exists, but we can't observe anything in dimensions beyond ours. It's just like a cartoon character drawn on a two-dimensional piece of paper. That character can't visualize what is happening above or below that flat surface of the paper.
As this object is wiggling around in a fourth dimension, it is traveling through time because time is the fourth dimension.
Quantum physics has demonstrated that particles can instantly move from one location to another without existing anywhere in between. String Theory can help explain how this works.
That particle is merely wiggling within the fourth dimension. Eventually, it wiggles back into our three-dimensional world in a different location, and we see it again.
Does that mean it became nothing and then later became something again? If that particle is unobservable, who's to say it is nothing? Just because we can't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
In the following TED Talk, Philosopher Jim Holt describes how everything in the universe was created from nothing.
In my opinion, he failed to do that. But that demonstrates how difficult it is for philosophers to understand or describe the concept of nothingness.
It's best to avoid asking the question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" A better question might be, "How do you experience nothingness?"
As I said at the beginning of this article, this concept has long troubled physicists and philosophers and will continue to do so for eternity.
Watch the following video if you're curious to see how Mr. Holt struggles with the explanation of nothingness for 17 minutes.
We live in a three-dimensional world that travels through time (the fourth dimension).
Imagine limiting space (length, width, and height) to a single point that has no dimension. Now, imagine limiting time to a single point as well, so that all four directions are zero length.
Isn't that the definition of a black hole, where all matter is compressed into nothingness? Except that all the energy from that matter is still there. (Remember E=mc2).
And that includes time. So time becomes non-existent in a black hole, too, leaving us with a four-dimensional point with no width, length, height, or time. That's the ultimate definition of nothingness.
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